Red Sticks - Australia

A landmark new Anolis lighting scheme has been installed to illuminate Melbourne's iconic 'Red Sticks' urban sculpture on CityLink. It is 80% more energy efficient … and also ensures that the installation looks fantastic and crystal clear to all using the city's Tullamarine & Flemington Road Interchange.

Project Details

Denton Corker Marshall’s Melbourne Gateway (originally completed 1999) is described as the ‘Mother of all architectural interventions’ on the city’s freeways!

A massive 70 metre yellow steel beam cantilevered at precarious angles traverses 8 lanes of freeway and 39 elegant 30 metre high steel and concrete red sticks run North/South either side of the road over 420 metres, depicting the city’s panache and freedom for design, style and ideas.

The North section contains 21 sticks which are 7 metres apart from one another stretching over a 142 metre distance, while the South is a section of 18 sticks also 7 metres apart, spread over a 120 metre area and sitting in an artificial lake. Transfield Services – the primary Maintenance Contractor for CityLink - approached Anolis, with a brief to create a lighting design that improved the colour, light qualities and ambience of the original installation.

CityLink stipulated that the lighting must have a contemporary edge, be a vastly more eco-friendly package and reduce on-going running costs to meet its sustainability principles. Prior to discussions with Transfield Services, calculations were completed to assess the most appropriate product that would deliver the right results along with the best energy savings. Carefully choosing certain fixtures allowed the project to deliver a massive 80% saving on energy.

Anolis specified the robust high quality ArcSource™ 96 LED fixtures, chosen for their Impressive light output, ruggedness and ability to customize the product lensing and also the casing for vandal-resistance. The ArcSource™ 96 has a maximum power consumption of 100W, compared to the previous incandescent sources, which were a hefty 1000W each – facts which spoke for themselves!

The ArcSource™ 96s were fitted with tough protective back-plates, Anaconda cable casing and a special lens array to ensure that the light reaches exactly the right places.
When it came to the physical installation, the Transfield Services electricians simply removed the old lighting fixtures from their posts and replaced them with the ArcSource™ 96s, again saving time and costs to the client by utilizing the existing infrastructure.

The Anolis units were additionally customized at the factory and fitted with wireless receiver cards and special antenna, providing a neat solution for data control, saving masses of time and the trouble of running more cables. A total of 78 Anolis ArcSource™ 96s (two per stick) are utilized to light the Red Sticks – which look resplendent – glowing, shimmering and clearly visible for the enjoyment of all crossing the Melbourne Gateway. Each fixture is individually and independently controlled.

The control signal from the main transmission hub is sent directly to the Northern fixtures. At the furthest – 154 metre - point here, a repeater unit beams it to the Southern ArcSource™ 96s, and that repeated signal then runs from 148 metres to the most distant unit at 268 metres away. The lights are controlled by an E:Cue Butler XT system with automatic triggers for seasonal changes and special occasions. The lights are on for 10 hours each night, year-round.

The Red Sticks’ lighting has a seasonal signature look which benefits from the ArcSource’s additive colour mixing. They turn red in the summer, blue in the winter, cyan in the spring and yellow for the autumn. The exact hues were all fine-tuned by the Anolis team to ensure that they work best visually when combined with the art.